Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online Page A

air?” he asked. “Did you ever dream you landed on a planet or star?
    “I dreamed I flew up there once,” he said, going on. “It was all lighted up. Man, it was beautiful! I landed on the moon, but once I stood there at last, I didn’t dare take a breath.”
    I moved closer. He had a light nylon jacket. He took it off and laid it over me. I was suddenly comfortable” very comfortable, and warm.
    “No,” he said. “No, I was scared to breathe.”
    I woke up. I had fallen asleep in the arms of Lipsha’s jacket, in the cold wet wheat under the flashing sky. I heard the clanging sound of struck metal, pots tumbling in the house. Gordie was gone. Eli was gone. “Come on,” I said, jumping straight up at the noise. “They’re fighting.” I ran up the hill, Lipsha pounding behind me. I stumbled straight into the lighted kitchen and saw at once that King was trying to drown Lynette. He was pushing her face in the sink of cold dishwater. Holding her by the nape and the ears.
    Her arms were whirling, knocking spoons and knives and bowls out of the drainer. She struggled powerJ fully, but he had her. I grabbed a block of birch out of the woodbox and hit King on the back of the neck. The wood bounced out of my fists. He pushed her lower, and her throat caught and gurgled.
    I grabbed his shoulders. I expected that Lipsha was behind me.
    King hardly noticed my weight. He pushed her lower. So I had no choice then. I jumped on his back and bit his ear. My teeth met and blood filled my mouth. He reeled backward, bucking me off, and I flew across the room, hit the refrigerator solidly, and got back on my feet.
    His hands were cocked in boxer’s fists. He was deciding who to hit first, I thought, me or Lipsha. I glanced around. I was alone. I stared back at King, scared for the first time. Then the fear left and I was mad, just mad, at Lipsha, at King, at Lynette, at June…. I looked past King and I saw what they had done.
    All the pies were smashed. Torn open. Black juice bleeding through the crusts. Bits of jagged shells were stuck to the wall and some were turned completely upside down. Chunks of rhubarb were scraped across the floor. Meringue dripped from the towels.
    “The pies!” I shrieked. “You goddamn sonofabitch, you broke the pies!”
    His eyes widened. When he glanced around at the destruction, Lynette scuttled under the table. He took in what he could, and then his fists lowered and a look at least resembling shame, confusion, swept over his face, and he rushed past me. He stepped down flat on his fisherman hat as he ran, and after he was gone I picked it up.
    I went into the next room and stuffed the hat under King Junior’s mattress. Then I sat for a long time, listening to his light breathing.
    He was always a good baby, or more likely a wise soul.
    He slept through everything he could possibly sleep through.
    Lynette had turned the lights out in the kitchen as she left the house, and now I heard her outside the window begging King to take her away in the car.
    “Let’s go off before they all get back,” she said. “It’s them. You always get so crazy when you’re home. We’ll get the baby. We’ll go off. We’ll go back to the Cities, go home.”
    And then she cried out once, but clearly it was a cry like pleasure.
    I thought I heard their bodies creak together, or perhaps it was just the wood steps beneath them, the old worn boards bearing their weight.
    They got into the car soon after that. Doors slammed. But they traveled just a few yards and then stopped. The horn blared softly.
    Isuppose they knocked against it in passion. The heater roared on from time to time. It was a cold, spare dawn.
    Sometime that hour I got up, leaving the baby, and went into the kitchen. I spooned the fillings back into the crusts, married slabs of dough, smoothed over edges of crusts with a wetted finger, fit crimps to crimps and even fluff to fluff on top of berries or pudding. I worked carefully for over an hour.